


Talk Nerdy to Me

by Setkia



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: AU, Akaashi's got a sexy voice, Bokuto is bad at math, Dyslexic Bokuto, Fluff, Humour, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-19
Updated: 2016-12-11
Packaged: 2018-08-31 23:13:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,896
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8597518
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Setkia/pseuds/Setkia
Summary: “Are you a phone sex operator?”There’s the distinct sound of someone choking on their own spit before the word “Pardon?” comes out of the phone in a godly sexy voice.“I just mean you have such a sexy voice, clearly you’re like one of those people who do phone sex with others, right? Like … I’m so hard for you right now, I want you so bad—”“I’m a math tutor,” they cut Bokuto off pretty quickly and then he remembers the call is being recorded. Okay. Yeah, not his best move.“Oh. Right. I called for math help, didn’t I?” He's turning red. Perhaps he shouldn’t have said that. Well, what was done was done. “Right, so … how about them fractions?”





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I don't own Haikyūu!! Also, it's very smally insinuated that Bokuto has dyslexia, something that I consider a headcanon. I hate phone operators, but you know what? I just kinda thought why not do a little BokuAka from it? I'm not going to be able to post at all this week since I'll be away in a land with very poor wi-fi, but I'll have a new chapter for new follower: applepi when I get back!

"You're off the team."

The (apparently ex-) ace of the Fukurōdani boys’ volleyball club stares at his teacher with his mouth half-open. “What do you mean?”

“You know how extracurricular activities work here, don’t you, Bokuto? You’re in your third year, I should hope you know by now. You can stay on the team, so long as you maintain certain grades.”

“I don’t see the problem—”

“You’ve seen your math exam, am I right?”

Bokuto grimaces. “But—”

“It’s not a one-time thing either, Bokuto and you know it.” Her gaze is sharp and he almost sinks into his seat. “It’s a temporary suspension, until you get your grades up. We can’t have people thinking we let idiots run our team, am I right?”

Bokuto swallows. Bring up his grades?

“I suggest you get a tutor,” the teacher continues. Can’t she tell Bokuto’s world is falling apart and he doesn’t know how to deal with it? “Here.” She hands him a slip of paper with a name written on it. He stares at it and it doesn’t translate well to him, the writing is all fancy and it’s hard to understand. “Give them a call.”

* * *

He stares at the numbers on the card for a long time and after calling the wrong number perhaps ten times, he gets them. Them, is a tutoring company that does free tutoring over the phone to help “disabled” students who need help. He’s not disabled, just cause he can’t read as well as everyone else doesn’t make him “disabled” or whatever.

“Hello and welcome to A Plus, the free tutoring assistant to help you with all your learning needs! Please select the grade level you require aid at,” says a robotic voice. “For elementary school, press one. For junior high, press two. For high school press—”

“Yeah yeah, I get it,” Bokuto says, pressing three before she has to tell him.

“Which area do you need help in?” asks the robotic woman’s voice. “Please press the number that coincides with the subject you require assistance in and we will have a volunteer in your grade-level aid you in the subject. Press one for history. Press two for science. Press three for English. Press four for math. Press five for-”

Bokuto has never hit the four button so forcefully before.

“Please wait while we find someone to help you. Please keep in mind that in order to make sure the services we provide you with are the best we can offer, your conversation will be recorded for improvement purposes.”

And then they start playing that annoying song on repeat. It’s not even remotely nice music, nothing they play on the radio, probably written by some dead composer from way back in the 15th century or something awful like that.

After twenty minutes, someone is on the other end.

“Hel—”

“I’d like to file a complaint about your shitty waiting for someone to pick up the phone on the other line music!” Bokuto says.

There’s silence.

“Hello? Am I still speaking to a robot? Did you not hear me? Fix your Goddamn tasteless waiting music, if you’re gonna make us listen to it for so fucking long, make sure it’s good stuff!”

“How may I help you in math?” says the person on the other line, completely ignoring Bokuto’s complaint. They say they want to help their customers and improve their service and yet they don’t even listen to his complaints? Oh, Bokuto is totally going to talk to the big man at the top of the customer service ladder or whatever and — wait, holy fuck, what kind of a voice was that?

“Are you a phone sex operator?”

There’s the distinct sound of someone choking on their own spit before the word “Pardon?” comes out of the phone in a godly sexy voice.

“I just mean you have such a sexy voice, clearly you’re like one of those people who do phone sex with others, right? Like … I’m so hard for you right now, I want you so bad—”

“I’m a math tutor,” they cut Bokuto off pretty quickly and then he remembers the call is being recorded. Okay. Yeah, not his best move.

“Oh. Right. I called for math help, didn’t I?” He's turning red. Perhaps he shouldn’t have said that. Well, what was done was done. “Right, so … how about them fractions?”

“It’s no problem, Customer-san,” says Sexy Voice. “May I ask you what year you’re in?”

“Bokuto,” Bokuto says before he can stop himself. “Bokuto Kōtarō is my name.”

“That’s nice, Bokuto-san.” It sounds the same way his mother says “that’s nice” when Bokuto speaks about volleyball for too long. “Now what year are you in?”

“Third,” says Bokuto. “Um, I need help in math.”

“I thought so. Any area in particular?”

“Um …” Bokuto searches his mind, trying to find the least-stupid thing he can say. Is he really going to try and impress a stranger with a sexy voice on the other end of the phone? He doesn’t know who they are, doesn’t know anything about them. He’s known them maybe two minutes. And yet, “Chemistry.”

“You realize I’m a math tutor, right? I can transfer you to someone who specializes in science-”

“No I meant chemistry as in … as in we have chemistry, don’t we?” Bokuto should smack his head against the wall and give himself a concussion. He can’t make this any worse, can he? “I meant—”

There’s a soft chuckle on the other end and Bokuto is totally red now. “Was that an attempt at pick-up line, Bokuto-san?”

Shit, his teasing voice is amazing.

“Um … algebra. I can’t remember how algebra works.”

“Algebra,” repeats Sexy Voice in a deadpan. “Do you know how broad algebra is?”

“Um … probably the length of your shoulders?”

He wonders if the guy’s face palming yet, or feeling bad for him. He probably is. Bokuto could not possibly get worse than this, right? He’s already doing really badly anyway. He wonders if the guy’s cringing yet, or if he’s going to hand the phone over to someone else to stop Bokuto from harassing him.

“Do you have your homework with you?”

Again with the ignoring? Bokuto can’t say if he’s glad because he’s ignoring his obviously failing attempts at seducing him, or if he should be offended that he’s not even remotely bad enough for the guy to make a comment on it.

“Yeah, give me a second.” Bokuto grabs his work and sits down on his bed. “I have …” Bokuto squints and stares at the paper. It’s gonna take a while. “Rat … rational, squack— square-root, abs … absolute. Well, I have abs too, but um …” Judging by the silence on the other end, Bokuto supposes he should just continue. “Quadratic functions.” He scrunches his nose. “Shit, this is complicated.”

“Which do you want to start with?”

Fuck him for being so composed while Bokuto’s turning red as a tomato.

“Um … Quad?”

“Okay, so if a function is a quadratic, it’s usually a parabola, which is to say, a symmetrical open plane curve formed by the intersection of a cone with a plane parallel to its side. The path of a projectile under the influence of gravity ideally follows a curve of this shape.”

Bokuto nods furiously but to be honest, he has no fucking clue what the guy just said, just that it sounded beautiful.

“—so can you give me an example of what the equation of a parabola would be?”

“Huh?”

“Are you listening, Bokuto-san?”

“Yeah,” says Bokuto because he is, really, he’s hearing all the beautiful sounds that are coming from this man’s mouth, it’s just that the words don’t make any sense, like he’s hearing words, but they don’t really mean anything to him, spoken in an alien tongue or something.

“Do you _understand_ , Bokuto-san?”

“Say my name again.”

“Bokuto-san.”

Bokuto is sure he’s going to die of a red face. “Did I really say that aloud?”

“Yes, you did. Now, do you understand Bokuto-san?”

“Not really …” If Bokuto were a girl, he’d probably be twirling the phone cord around his finger as he swung in his swirly chair at his desk, but he's not a girl, so he doesn’t. Also because he’s on a bed and there is no cord to the phone so instead he lays on his stomach with the textbook open in front of him, a blank piece of quad paper, a stupidly complicated graphing calculator, and he’s kicking his feet in the air behind him as he listens to the person’s voice. “Mind telling me your name?”

“I hardly see how this is relevant—”

“But if I don’t know your name, then I’ll just keep calling you Sexy Voice in my head and then that’d be embarrassing for the both of us,” Bokuto points out.

There’s a sigh on the other end of the line and then, “Akaashi.”

“Ah-kaaaashi …” Bokuto repeats, but he feels like he’s saying it wrong. “That’s wrong, isn’t it?”

“You can call me however you’d like, Bokuto-san, but you must get working.”

Bokuto checks the phone’s little tiny screen that tells him how long his conversation is. Shit, he’s been procrastinating for twenty minutes. Well, not really procrastinating, he’s trying to get this guy’s number after all and that’s not a waste of time. “Why?” he whines.

“Because my shift will be over soon and nothing will have been accomplished.”

“Your shift?” Bokuto repeats.

“Yes, my shift, Bokuto-san.”

“How long do we have?”

“Perhaps half an hour more, at best. If my shift ends and we get nothing done, you’ll have to explain to the next person who’s on their shift your situation again.”

Bokuto sits up straight. “Right uh, the parabola.”

There’s a light chuckle that sounds like fairies smiling, or however the saying is supposed to go. “Do you know what kind of equation would make a parabola?”

“Um …” Bokuto squints at his paper. “Y equals X squared?”

“You read that, didn’t you?”

“And if I did?”

“Next, do you know what the h, k is?”

“The what?”

“The vertex of the parabola is called the h, k. The vertex of all functions are called the h, k.”

“But it’s Y and X.”

“The axes are Y and X, but the point of the vertex is the h, k.”

“That’s stupid.”

“I didn’t come up with it.”

“Um, Akaashi?”

“Hmm?”

“What’s a vertex?”

“It’s the middle point of the parabola. There’s general and standard form to write the rule of a parabola, so for example, if I were to write y= ax squared + bx - c, that’s in general form. Standard form is written as y=a (x-h) + k.” There’s a pause. “Are you writing this down, Bokuto-san?”

Bokuto grabs a pen quickly and writes it down. He’s proud of himself, his blank paper now has words on it.

To his surprise, Bokuto then spends the next half-hour doing nothing but math, listening dedicatedly to what Akaashi is telling him and to his shock, he actually gets it. The way Akaashi explains it, everything makes more sense. It’s less confusing somehow.

“My shift’s over,” says Akaashi. “Good luck in school, Bokuto-san—”

“Wait!”

There’s a pause. “What is it?”

“Um … I think I’m gonna need more help. From you.”

Akaashi is silent.

“So if you could tell me … how do I get you again? Specifically?”

“Bokuto-san, what is your number?”

“Why?” Bokuto’s voice may have raised an octave, but he’s going to pretend nothing happened.

“I can tutor you myself. Privately.”

Bokuto grins. “I knew it, you so are a phone sex operator!”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't own Haikyuu. I had to do this cause I have this idea that they're all volleyball dorks and Akaashi's the type of guy who sounds all cool and collected, but is actually freaking out, so I wanted to do a contrast thing between him and Bokuto, over the phone.

Akaashi Keiji is tired.

He works hard at school and gets paid a small amount of money for his tutoring job which occurs over the phone, from five till six every week-day. His schedule is somewhat gruelling and he’s exhausted nearly every day. He had to stop playing volleyball in order to fit his new job into his schedule and dropping the job was not an option considering he needed the money if he ever planned on getting into college. Akaashi’s not full of himself, he knows he can’t make a sports scholarship and even if he’s only in his second year, it’ll go by fast and he needs to be prepared.

He’s greeted by his coworkers who all sit in their own relatively small cubicles with different textbooks, corresponding to their area of expertise. He slouches in his swirly chair and waits.

After a while, he gets a notification from the boss. There’s someone in high school requiring help in mathematics. Akaashi isn’t good at using the phone so he fumbles with the buttons a bit until he finds the right one.

“Hel-”

“I’d like to file a complaint about your shitty waiting for someone to pick up the phone on the other line music!”

Akaashi holds the phone a bit farther from his ear. The cord gets a bit tangled (stupid old fashioned phones) and then pulls it back. This is not what he was expecting today, but at least now he doesn’t need his coffee. His mother says it’s a bad habit of his, to constantly be drinking that stuff.

“Hello? Am I still speaking to a robot? Did you not hear me? Fix your Goddamn tasteless waiting music, if you’re gonna make us listen to it for so fucking long, make sure it’s good stuff!”

Akaashi counts to ten in his head and then, poised, says, “How may I help you in math?”

He opens the drawer with all the main textbooks used by the regular schools and touches their spine with his finger, holding in the urge to hum. He looks at the coffee on the corner of his desk. One sip couldn’t hurt, right?

“Are you a phone sex operator?”

Akaashi chokes and spills coffee on himself. He bites his lip to keep in a swear word, and manages a “Pardon?” before he’s trying to clean himself off before the spill grows into a stain, trying to keep it out of earshot from the phone. His mother can’t know he’s gone back to drinking it black-

“I just mean you have such a sexy voice, clearly you’re like one of those people who do phone sex with others, right? Like … I’m so hard for you right now, I want you so bad—”

“I’m a math tutor,” Akaashi says quickly, before he can turn even redder which has nothing to do with the third degree burn he’s getting from the coffee in his shirt.

“Oh. Right. I called for math help, didn’t I?” the voice asks and Akaashi stops for the first time to realize what they sound like. It’s a nice sound, a nice voice. He’s never really put much thought into how people sound over the phone, but he really does get a sense of personality from this voice.  “Right, so … how about them fractions?”

“It’s no problem, Customer-san,” Akaashi says, trying to hold in a laugh. “May I ask you what year you’re in?”

“Bokuto.” Akaashi blinks. He’s about to ask when- “Bokuto Kōtarō is my name.”

“That’s nice, Bokuto-san.” Well now he’s ignoring what Akaashi’s doing and Akaashi gets paid to help him. It’s not his fault if he never gets anything done.  “Now what year are you in?”

“Third.” Then their voice gets kinda timid when they mutter, “Um, I need help in math.”

“I thought so,” Akaashi says, unable to stop the smirk on his face. “Any area in particular?”

“Um …” It’s weird, usually people know what they need help in and if they don’t have an immediate answer, they’re leafing through their textbook. He doesn’t hear any pages rustling, until suddenly, Bokuto-san blurts out “Chemistry.”

Akaashi frowns. “You realize I’m a math tutor, right? I can transfer you to someone who specializes in science-”

“No I meant chemistry as in … as in we have chemistry, don’t we?” He’s wincing as he says it, like he knows how bad it sounds. “I meant—”

Akaashi can’t hold in a chuckle. “Was that an attempt at pick-up line, Bokuto-san?”

“Um … algebra. I can’t remember how algebra works.”

“Algebra,” Akaashi repeats. “Do you know how broad algebra is?”

“Um … probably the length of your shoulders?”

It’s a good thing Akaashi’s put the coffee back on the table because otherwise his shirt wouldn’t be the only thing he’d get dirty. He leans back in his chair and tries to untangle the telephone cord. “Do you have your homework with you?”

“Yeah, give me a second.” Akaashi waits, playing with the phone cord just a bit. He may as well do something during his spare time, it’s not like he’s some teenager who’s lying on their bed with their feet kicking in the air behind them as they speak with the phone to their ear. The fact that he may start swirling in his chair means nothing, it’s a swirly chair, it’d be a waste not to use it. “I have …” Here he slows down a bit. “Rat … rational, squack— square-root, abs … absolute. Well, I have abs too, but um …” Okay, Akaashi is starting to get curious about the one on the other line. “Quadratic functions. Shit, this is complicated.”

“Which do you want to start with?”

“Um … Quad?”

“Okay, so if a function is a quadratic, it’s usually a parabola, which is to say, a symmetrical open plane curve formed by the intersection of a cone with a plane parallel to its side. The path of a projectile under the influence of gravity ideally follows a curve of this shape.”

 _Yes, keep talking about math Akaashi, if you think too much and wonder must he’s like on the other end, you’ll get distracted._ “With that description, which I think was pretty good, you should be able to tell what a quadratic equation looks like, so can you give me an example of what the equation of a parabola would be?”

“Huh?”

Akaashi holds in a laugh. “Are you listening, Bokuto-san?”

“Yeah,” says Bokuto-san with a far off kind of tone in his voice, like he’s not really there.

“Do you _understand_ , Bokuto-san?” Akaashi corrects.

“Say my name again.”

Akaashi rolls his eyes. “Bokuto-san.”

It seems to register to him that he spoke when he didn’t want to. “Did I really say that aloud?”

“Yes, you did. Now, do you understand Bokuto-san?”

“Not really …”

Akaashi nods, about to explain it better when-

“Mind telling me your name?”

“I hardly see how this is relevant—”

“But if I don’t know your name, then I’ll just keep calling you Sexy Voice in my head and then that’d be embarrassing for the both of us.”

It’ll probably be more embarrassing for Bokuto-san, who may have forgotten that the message is being recorded, though when he takes breaks, he does know the guy who listens to the recordings to see what worked and what didn’t. He’ll give Akaashi a weird look for weeks, partly for not hanging up on Bokuto-san and partly for letting him get away with such inappropriate conversation topics. He supposes he only has one choice.

“Akaashi,” he says with a sigh.

“Ah-kaaaashi …” It sounds like Bokuto-san is testing out how it sounds on his tongue. “That’s wrong, isn’t it?”

“You can call me however you’d like, Bokuto-san, but you must get working,” Akaashi reminds him. He can feel his collar heating up, he’s never heard someone put so much thought into the way they say his name (which is kinda idiotic that he’s getting so flustered over something so stupid).

“Why?”

“Because my shift will be over soon and nothing will have been accomplished.” Though it’s to tell him, another part of it is to remind Akaashi that he can’t banter with the customer for however long he wants. He does get paid, but if he gets nothing done they won’t be above holding back his paycheck.

“Your shift?” Bokuto-san repeats.

“Yes, my shift, Bokuto-san.”

“How long do we have?”

“Perhaps half an hour more, at best. If my shift ends and we get nothing done, you’ll have to explain to the next person who’s on their shift your situation again.”

Suddenly the voice sounds a lot more alert. “Right uh, the parabola.”

Akaashi chuckles, shaking his head. “Do you know what kind of equation would make a parabola?”

“Um … Y equals X squared?”

“You read that, didn’t you?”

“And if I did?”

“Next, do you know what the h, k is?”

“The what?”

“The vertex of the parabola is called the h, k. The vertex of all functions are called the h, k.” Akaashi notices someone passing by his cubicle, giving him a strange look. What’s wrong? Is he smiling? He knows that it’s kinda weird, he doesn’t usually smile (not that he’s usually upset, it’s more like he just doesn’t have the energy to smile). He makes a shooing motion at them, and swirls in his chair once more. The cord nearly strangles him.

“But it’s Y and X.”

“The axes are Y and X, but the point of the vertex is the h, k.”

“That’s stupid.”

“I didn’t come up with it.”

“Um, Akaashi?”

“Hmm?” Akaashi asks, trying to save himself from the death trap that is old telephone cords.

“What’s a vertex?”

“It’s the middle point of the parabola. There’s general and standard form to write the rule of a parabola, so for example, if I were to write y= ax squared + bx - c, that’s in general form. Standard form is written as y=a (x-h) + k.” Akaashi pauses but there’s no sound of pencil against paper. “Are you writing this down, Bokuto-san?”

They spend the next half-hour talking, during which Akaashi has a continuous and endless battle with a telephone cord that seems set on strangling him. He comes up with strange metaphors to help Bokuto-san along and ends up laughing a fair bit more than he usually does, earning him some strange looks from anyone who sees him.

When they finish, Akaashi feels a bit sad to say good-bye. “My shift’s over, good luck in school, Bokuto-san-”

“Wait!”

Akaashi has just managed to get the cord in a relatively manageable order. “What is it?” he asks, standing up and reaching for his coffee.

“Um … I think I’m gonna need more help,” Bokuto-san says, and Akaashi’s just about to tell him not to lose the company’s number, and take a fresh sip of coffee when- “From you.”

Akaashi holds the phone away from him and coughs, trying to breathe despite his inability to properly think. He pulls the phone close to his ear fast enough to hear “-could tell me … how do I get to you again? Specifically?”

Akaashi has turned into a firetruck. The coworker in the cubicle next to him is racing to his side, trying to thump him on the back, but Akaashi tries to push him away, trying to hold in his cough. “Bokuto-san, what is your number?”

His coworker raises an eyebrow at him.

“Why?” asks Bokuto-san.

“I can tutor you myself.” His coworker’s eyes are widening dramatically. “Privately.”

Bokuto-san’s grin is audible even over the phone. Akaashi’s sure it’s a beautiful grin. “I knew it, you so are a phone sex operator!”

Akaashi writes down his number on a piece of paper and they hang up. His coworker raises an eyebrow at him.

“Shut up,” Akaashi tells him.


End file.
